Crasical

War mace/ Energy Aura. I'm both Strong and Pretty.

Doesn't have an animation for use when flying. You drop down as if standing on an invisible solid surface when in midair.

Surveillance is actually good, Freeze Ray and Sleep gas are boring but functional (Though I always questioned Freeze ray in what's basically a 'military hardware' patron pool, it seems too futuristic), which basically leaves LRM and Body Armor as the problem children. Body Armor probably just needs its numbers jiggled a little, but LRM is kind of a mess of a power that doesn't really know what it wants to be. Looooong recharge, looooong cast time, interruptible, and the damage isn't quite enough to justify the previous three issues. I have it and I use it, but not because it's a *good* power.

Bump.

Transferred my Merc/Traps over from live, noodled around a little bit doing the repeatable missions in dark astoria. Definitely feels like I'm doing more damage due to my henchmen attacking faster, though the incarnate BP still tore my ass open even through all my layered defense, resistance, and healing. The gimmick of the soldiers going from using SMGs to Assault Rifles when upgraded appears to be gone, they just get more and more attacks as they get upgrade. Does focus fire do much? No, not really, at least not versus standard bosses. Vs. AVs and EBs, it will probably be more impactful. It's a small 'gravy' bonus for having the attacks more than a huge change in and of itself. If you didn't take the attacks prior, I don't expect this to change your mind, but if you already took one or two, it's an add-on. Does the slotting change for Equip Mercenary and Tactical Upgrade change much? Also not really. The extra 8-9% resist from swapping over from an Endred IO (that I didn't need) to a +Res IO was nice, as was the small amount of extra defense. Serum is actually good now! I still have it muling the resistance IOs, but it's a fat +Res/+dam boost for the whole team, and it mez protects against things that my FFG doesn't (Namely, knockdown: I can pop serum to keep my guys from ragdolling everywhere or getting clowned by an ice slick). I found myself using it reactively more than anything, and it was up when I needed it. Nice. It's a couple small nice things, plus the mercs getting reworked to be more aggressive/faster attacking. It's nice.

How much is the new slottable Ranged/AOE Defense in Tactical Upgrade?

It really is in kind of a weird place where it's not a PBAoE but it's got no range to be used as a TAoE. It either needs more or, weirdly, *Less* range to be used with comfort.

Could you point me in the direction of those? A quick search didn't find them.

And playing with one hand tied behind your back! Which I imagine is going to be a necessary skill because the only way I can imagine getting a team to do this is to have them handcuffed to your radiator.

'A squawk from an arachnos headset', Vig-to-villain tip, Brittany Fairchild spawns using a male arachnos model. This may have happened due to playing with solo bosses disabled, as she is a downgraded boss.

The titan weapon greatsword is literally called 'Razor Sword'. https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:TW_Razor_Sword.jpg There's also Excalibur, and several forms of energy sword, all of which do lethal damage when another set uses it. It's not the literal definition of the weapon in the powerset name, it's not the damage type, and it's not based on any historical factors as to the use of weapons. Hence my summation that it's purely based on vibes. Rename Dual Blades to Dual Weapons if it makes adding some blunt options more palatable, why not.

There are a few options for Assault Rifle (The retro scifi rifles) that don't have any sort of barrel or visible aperture for bullets. Dual Blades has a few axes as weapon options. Titan Weapons has nearly half its options being large, bladed weapons despite the set doing smashing damage. So if it's not weapon shape or damage type, what is the deciding factor for if a particular weapon is suitable? Generally, the strict definitions on what can be a weapon skin for a given set seem to be loosening, and if we're judging just off vibes, I don't see why we can't have a dual-blades character using twin tonfas or telescopic batons.

There are quite a few Katana and Ninja Blade weapons that aren't Katanas.

Is it actually that good? I got the impression it wouldn't proc well because it's got multiple psudeopets dropping for every fire patch, and the character I was going deep into Sorcery with was a Controller, so not great damage there to begin with.

https://cod.uberguy.net/ The electric blast is pretty hard to parse, for me at least, since it got the Shocked status where it does more effect when the enemy's endurance is low, but it seems to refund a portion of the attack's endurance cost per power.

Running through the list, looks like just Council galaxy LT's Gravimetric Snare immobilize and the galaxy boss' Gravity Well hold.

These are what the new tights patterns look like, by the way.

It's a constant stream of rapid 1 damage ticks on my controller, like Rain of Fire. If I had to guess it's about the same?

My sentinel already already had all 3 cones before this update, incidentally, so I was already in the rythm of shockwave/howl/sirens to deal with groups and then picking one enemy to bully with my single targets while the rest slept. The summer blockbuster knockback is a primo choice in Shockwave, it keeps them grouped for the future cones and makes some enemies hit by the proc portion do a funny double-flop that keeps them down longer than usual. I still found it to be up Enough, since I mostly use it to keep enemies ragdolling while I sneak in Howl before applying or reapplying Siren's.

Why is the cap for sentinels lower to begin with? Why is it a problem for them to get the same amount of AoE that all the other ranged archetypes get? Especially on an underplayed, underperforming archetype. Don't get me wrong, the powerset's in a much better place after this pass, I feel. But I hope that the target cap is something that you'll consider increasing going forward, and not something we'll have to wait possibly another half-year for a Sentinel Rework to see.

Okay, I ran through about five paper missions and a mayhem, split between 25 where my sentinel is now and 35 to future test it. I ran the missions at x4 for 25 and x6 for 35. And yeah, I was wrong. It feels great, the meatier siren's song is a great add to spitting the cone trio out, and shockwave/howl/siren's song is a really good bit of control, enemies on their back, damaged, and then slept. The set is buttery smooth with chaining attacks now, the changes in damage and recharge speed and timing all come together really well. However, the fly in the ointment is the changes in sentinel target caps. You feel them in play even at x4 enemy density when ambushes start approaching 7-9 enemies, at x6 it starts to become a serious problem, and I suspect at x8 density it's going to become a painful issue. It *Feels* bad firing into a crowd and only hitting a few enemies. I understand the reason of standardizing it across sentinels, but it feels sucky in motion. I can't agree with going out of your way to make a sentinel set *worse*, especially not in the name of standardization. I would suggest leaving the target caps where they are currently until there's time for a balance pass on the sentinel as a whole rather than singling out Sonic Blast.

Ice slick does damage? Yep. Sure does. Not a lot, but it's there. Now, Arctic Air being able to trip Overpower, that's pretty noticeable. You can get a LOT of confusion flying around in a group with that toggle on, now. It's quite nice, being a mobile chaos zone.

Good: faster animations, Siren Song recharges faster and does more damage (.69 damage scale more) Meh: Howl recharges 2 sec secs faster, Shockwave recharges 3 secs slower, gained 0.0946 damage scale between them. Cons: enormously lowered ability to apply -res. Max targets on two cones reduced from 10 to 6 (I'm on a Sentinel). It looks *really* bad on paper. I'll reserve further judgement until I can get home and test it myself, but...

So, correct me on this: The resistance debufff changes, they still apply the same -20 resistance, but it's on two separate timers that resist being stacked with each other, which works *against* the other changes of giving the attacks lower cooldowns, less damage, and faster animations. IE: I use Shriek, 12% 'short' and -8% Lingering. I then use Scream, for 0% extra debuff, it just rereshes the timer. I then go ahead and use Howl and only add an extra 8%, because most of the debuff is caught up in the 'short' vibration. Howl went from .8 to .66 scale, Shockwave went to .86 from .64 so... a *tiny* net increase on using those two powers together, I guess. The real big damage buff is in giving Siren's Song more damage, and the faster animations. Sentinels in particular get hit with their target caps getting nearly cut in half. I don't see why an already struggling archetype needed to get worse.

I went through most of the enemy groups that I could think of at the back-end of the game and this is what I came up with; specifically showing the ones that would get moved from smashing/lethal/energy to a more exotic damage type. I don't think that the proposed change is *nearly* as far reaching as some have claimed it is, it's a handful of enemies per villain group and Smashing/lethal/energy defense would *still* top of the heap as far as enemy attack prevalence, just less so than before. The only part that I'm concerned with is the toxic-targeting attacks, Arachnos and Arachnoids are *already* nasty and don't really need the help.